North Yarmouth bans sale, use of fireworks

NORTH YARMOUTH — Residents voted 21-8 at a special Town Meeting to ban the use and sale of consumer fireworks.

The Oct. 18 vote was prompted by a state law legalizing consumer fireworks that takes effect Jan. 1, 2012. The law allows municipalities to enact local restrictions, and the Board of Selectmen held a public hearing on the subject last month.

The ban does not include sparklers, morning glories, paper and plastic caps, missile-type rockets, helicopters and aerial spinners, toy pistols, toy canes, and sky and bottle rockets, as well as signal, replica or antique cannons, as long as no projectiles are fired.

“Basically, you can possess it, you can’t sell it, and if you shoot it off, you’re in trouble,” Administrative Assistant Marnie Diffin said last week.

Diffin noted that the ordinance language could not have undergone substantive changes at the meeting, but that it could be amended to allow fireworks by permit at a future Town Meeting.